Slow performance and lag after iOS 26 update on iPhone

suchinjack ~ Your iPhone 13 Pro Max could be 4 years old and the long process of applying a major iOS upgrade to an iPhone with a weak, aging battery can be the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back." So...

Does your iPhone 13 Pro Max still have its original battery?

And what's the Maximum Capacity % here?...

Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging

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So despite owning the flagship 17 pro, I'm also experiencing these exact performance issues. I don't use the device for very demanding tasks so I'm appalled that the latest iOS performs worse than iPad OS 6. It likes to lag when I navigate my home screen, when I close apps, when I type practically anything on the new keyboard, and scrolling websites. I have maybe 20 or so apps installed on the device and less than half the storage is being used from music, so I'm running out of things to blame that aren't iOS 26. To remedy this I tried reducing the liquid glass effects, turning off background app refresh, and getting rid of apps that run in the background. At this point they just need to fully optimize the operating system and make it usable without lag, I think it's possible but i'm tired of waiting.

Had the same issue on the iPhone 17. Took me a long time to find out Reduce Transparency was the issue. I turned it off today and now I can switch apps smoothly. I also turned on the tinted glass setting to make it a bit easier to see. Hope this helps.

I was told to Turn OFF Apple Intelligence and that helped a lot, but there are still many many problems with iOS26

Just google: List of problems with iOS26

THIISSSSS!!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH ! I just turned it off completely and now my phone is back to being lightning fast

I had the same problem and turning off reduce transparency worked to reduce the lag

Sp ce … issue is an annoyance. But see my earlier post. It’s the indexing that causes the lag, and the only way to fix this that I found was clean up the storage, dump cache safari, then backup, wipe, restore. The indexing will take a day, but when done the device will not be 95+% better. Again the lag is due imho to the indexing getting jammed.

Yeah so I posted this right before realizing that 26.3.1 was released haha. I updated to it last night and so far, so good.

staticfunction wrote:

I have a new iPhone 13, fresh from the box, updated it to ios 26.

Where did you get this phone? Apple stopped selling the iPhone 13 in September, 2024

Experienced significant lag. I noticed this to be related to the camera. Sometimes, when I open the camera, there's a significant lag and when I type on other apps I notice the keyboard is not responding.

How much free space do you have on the phone?

What's the difference between iCloud storage and device storage on your iPhone or iPad? - Apple Support

Thanks, just done this update and the restart solved the problem. Other pointers noted!

What is your Battery Health at Settings > Battery > Battery Health > Maximum Capacity?

A temporary fix

just do a hard reset and it will work fine for few weeks, speaking from personal experience

Turn off apple intelligence. It worked a dream on my 16 pro max. Back to being zippy and useable even with Proton VPN on.

If your iPhone or iPad is running slow - Apple Support

Try iOS 26.6